Three Books

I spent yesterday reading the book club selection, Missing Isaac, by Valerie Fraser Luesse. I would give it three stars for a debut novel. This was a good read, except for the vast number of characters. I kept up with the four main characters, but only toward the end did I get a hold on who was who among the others. Isaac and his mother were the only ones I was sure were black.

When I finished that one, I took up The Hobbit where I had left off. All day I had not turned on the television or the computer. In the late afternoon I tried to get online and couldn't. The I found that the TV and the phones were out. Looking out the front door through the rain, I saw a big limb from the ivy-covered tree lying on the ground, and the cable line lying under it. So I went up to Ramey's house and called Charter, and they came this morning and fixed it.

Today I finished reading The Hobbit, which I love a lot. And now I'm free to read my new book that arrived last week, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World, by Maya Jasanoff. John Le Carre called it superb, and Louis Menand described it as "history, biography, and adventure story."

I can't get rid of the spaces below.

Late Arrival

I had given up on a book I ordered through Amazon. They emailed me that it had shipped on May 7. I didn't worry too much, as it didn't cost anything except a bunch of earned "points." It finally did arrive today, a hard-cover book that looks new, The Dawn Watch: Joseph Conrad in a Global World.


I can already tell that it's wonderful, with illustrations of Conrad's family and travels every few pages. I flipped through and read a couple of pages telling about his marriage. But I didn't really start reading from the beginning. I need to finish The Hobbit before I begin another book.

This is the first book I've been excited about in months. It includes parts about Stanley and Livingstone, and about King Leopold's atrocities mentioned in Vachel Lindsay's poem. Conrad lived from 1857 to 1924.

This evening I counted 104 lightning-bug flashes in the back yard. There is a quiet joy in standing on the deck in the summer twilight, counting fireflies and contemplating sink holes.

A Happy Mother's Day

India and Ramey went with Jed and me to lunch at Carrabba's. They serve such good food! I had tarragon grilled chicken, and a most fabulous minestrone.

Jed gave me these gorgeous flowers for mother's day, and a beautiful card, which I haven't photographed yet.

When we got home this afternoon, Jed and I watched "Thunderheart," and another movie, "Anna," which was odd.

I'm having another spell of the same old nausea and pain. I hope it's going away now, though. I haven't eaten anything I'm not supposed to, unless it was that delicious soup; it was full of different kinds of beans, peas and other vegetables.

One of the Most Beautiful Poems

La Figlia Che Piange

Stand on the highest pavement of the stair--
Lean on a garden urn--
Weave, weave the sunlight in your hair--
Clasp your flowers to you with a pained surprise--
Fling them to the ground and turn
With a fugitive resentment in your eyes:
But weave, weave the sunlight in your hair.

So I would have had him leave,
So I would have had her stand and grieve,
So he would have left
As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised,
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand.

She turned away, but with the autumn weather
Compelled my imagination many days,
Many days and many hours:
Her hair over her arms and her arms full of flowers
And I wonder how they should have been together!
I should have lost a gesture and a pose.
Sometimes these cogitations still amaze
The troubled midnight and the noon's repose.


--T.S. Eliot

How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig****

We had book club meeting today (Thursday) at Ramey's; everyone was there except Nell who had an ophthalmology appointment. The book was How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig. I think everybody liked it as much as I did. I would call it science fiction, but that may be too simple an explanation.


About as soon as I got home after the meeting, I lay down and slept until 7:00 p.m. I woke up with nausea and abdominal pain, and from there it got worse. This event lasted until almost 11:00 p.m. I know it was because of the way I've been eating lately, raw fruit and vegetables, cornbread, stuff with lots of fiber, which I'm not supposed to eat. It had nothing to do with Ramey's delicious treats today--mainly pound cake and ice cream. I finally made myself a cup of tea, and that has restored me to some sort of humanity..


Jed is coming over tomorrow, and he wants us and Susan and Ramey to have lunch somewhere, either Saturday, or Sunday afternoon. I'm going to figure out what to eat beforehand; no more hamburgers and whole-kernel corn. It will be harder to surrender French fries.
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10:08 a.m. - I'm hungry, and I don't know what to eat. I'm still having stomach pains.